LETTERS: NORTH COUNTY, FEB. 15, 2013

The right to own a gun for the protection of life and property is as rational today as it was 200 years ago. As for owning a gun to oppose tyranny in this age of rockets, tanks and aircraft, that’s a moot point. What is significant is the understanding that there will be no “tyranny” to oppose as long as government adheres to the constitutional restraints the framers placed upon it.

Grant Kuhns

Carlsbad

Words have meanings

J. Howard Crews claims the first four words of the Second Amendment are key (“A well regulated militia is key,” Feb. 2).

He’s right. He just doesn’t have the correct key.

Coming home on leave in the mid ‘70s, after just joining the National Rifle Association, I had a question about the Second Amendment for my dad, an American history teacher. As usual, instead of telling me, he had me look it up. He gave me an old dictionary he had used in 1950 getting his Masters at Bowling Green State University.

I looked up “militia” and saw the usual definitions. But at the end of the article was the notation: “archaic: 18th century America. All male citizens, 18 to 45 years of age.” “Not an organized military group, rather all citizens capable of serving in times of need.”

I then looked up the word “regulated” and again found the same notation, “archaic: 18th century American. To demonstrate proficiency.”

Translating 18th century legalese into 21st century common American, the Second Amendment would read: “A citizenry, proficient in the use of firearms, being necessary to the security of a free state, etc.” Words have meanings and we need to understand what was meant when they were written.

Craig Vansant

Escondido

Must be tough for true believers

Professor Jeffrey Bada repeats the oft-cited, but unsupported, claim “that CO2 increase is the major factor in global warming,” by appealing to authority without establishing the exact association between CO2 and globally increasing temperatures (“Global warming redux,” Feb. 3).

It must be tough for true believers to have to constantly beat down the deniers, infidels, skeptics and nonbelievers. Forty years ago, the same gurus predicted a coming ice age. That didn’t pan out, so they built a new bandwagon, anthropogenic global warming; i.e., mankind’s actions are directly warming the planet, catastrophically.

No one doubts that the globe has warmed less than a degree Celsius, for the past 100-plus years. Just like it has in the past. It was also cooling as recently as 1970 and, although CO2 has continued increasing at a constant rate the past 60 years, the temperature rise has inexplicability stopped the past 15 years, contrary to all the computer models believers rely upon.

The primary bone of contention between the believers and the so-called deniers is whether man-made CO2 is the main driver of climate change. Many scientists don’t think so.

Guess who has a major stake in the CO2-drives-temperature theory? Prof. Bada and the resident “keep the government grants coming” Scripps Institution of Oceanography club.

John Baltutis

San Diego

Drone control?

To the gun control people, I have one question: How do you feel about President Obama’s drone program?